“Don’t speak to me! Loved her? Yes, sir, and had as good a right to love her as any one of your precious Brotherhood of the Rose. Don’t speak to me, I say, or I shall do you a mischief!”

So Eustace knew of the brotherhood too! Amyas longed to ask him how; but what use in that? If he knew it, he knew it; and what harm? So he only answered:

“My good cousin, why be wroth with me? If you really love her, now is the time to take counsel with me how best we shall—”

Eustace did not let him finish his sentence. Conscious that he had betrayed himself upon more points than one, he stopped short in his walk, suddenly collected himself by one great effort, and eyed Amyas from underneath his brows with the old down look.

“How best we shall do what, my valiant cousin?” said he, in a meaning and half-scornful voice. “What does your most chivalrous Brotherhood of the Rose purpose in such a case?”

Amyas, a little nettled, stood on his guard in return, and answered bluntly—

“What the Brotherhood of the Rose will do, I can’t yet say. What it ought to do, I have a pretty sure guess.”

“So have I. To hunt her down as you would an outlaw, because forsooth she has dared to love a Catholic; to murder her lover in her arms, and drag her home again stained with his blood, to be forced by threats and persecution to renounce that Church into whose maternal bosom she has doubtless long since found rest and holiness!”

“If she has found holiness, it matters little to me where she has found it, Master Eustace, but that is the very point that I should be glad to know for certain.”

“And you will go and discover for yourself?”

“Have you no wish to discover it also?”

“And if I had, what would that be to you?”

“Only,” said Amyas, trying hard to keep his temper, “that, if we had the same purpose, we might sail in the same ship.”

“You intend to sail, then?”

“I mean simply, that we might work together.”

“Our paths lie on very different roads, sir!”

“I am afraid you never spoke a truer word, sir. In the meanwhile, ere we part, be so kind as to tell me what you meant by saying that you had met this Spaniard at Lundy?”

“I shall refuse to answer that.”

“You will please to recollect, Eustace, that however good friends we have been for the last half-hour, you are in my power. I have a right to know the bottom of this matter; and, by heaven, I will know it.”

“In your power? See that you are not in mine! Remember, sir, that you are within a—within a few miles, at least, of those who will obey me, their Catholic benefactor, but who owe no allegiance to those Protestant authorities who have left them to the lot of the beasts which perish.”

Amyas was very angry. He wanted but little more to make him catch Eustace by the shoulders, shake the life out of him, and deliver him into the tender guardianship of Yeo; but he knew that to take him at